Last month, I briefly introduced the new MX-series of Robotis Dynamixel
servos and how these servos can help in building a mobile manipulator.

This article will take a step back through time to show the development
and evolution of the mechanical and electrical side of my mobile manipulator

FIGURE 1. Maxwell.

48 SERVO 05.2012

— a robot called Maxwell.

Motivation

There were a number of design goals with
the development of Maxwell. First and
foremost, I very much wanted to avoid the
hassle of setting up a test environment for my
robot (as I had long needed to do when
building smaller competition robots). I needed
a robust mobile manipulator that could operate
in a typical home environment. I decided that I
didn't particularly want to have to work mainly
on things on the floor, and so the arm was
targeted at a table top height. As I was
frequently transporting my robot to various
demos, it really needed to be easy to carry
around and/or ship. The goals became:
• To use as much open source hardware
and software as possible.